


In '64

by Leyenn



Series: 2063 [1]
Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Next Generation (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Stranded
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-11
Updated: 2011-08-11
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:11:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The future might still survive, but they're left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In '64

Beside him, Deanna breathed something horrified in Cyndri, but the blood rushing in his ears deafened him to the words.

Up there in the bright morning sky, he watched Jean-Luc Picard die, and their future along with him.

  


*

  


They worked out from the Vulcans what had happened, as far as they could.

He couldn't believe the Captain and Data had failed. Something had to have gone wrong, catastrophically wrong. Something had.

The _Enterprise_ had fired on the _Phoenix_. They'd gotten that much from the Vulcan recordings. Three quantum torpedoes. Three torpedoes that were on the wrong trajectory, that would have missed, if...

If Cochrane had had someone, anyone, to tell him it was okay that a ship from three-hundred years in the future was looming his way just as he hit the warp drive for the very first time.

He hadn't.

He hadn't wanted co-pilots who weren't Lily. Reg had volunteered, but Riker had dismissed it out of hand. He'd offered his own services. So had Geordi. Cochrane had been insistent.

_"The poor girl doesn't want strangers' hands on her at the critical moment," he'd snapped out. "I can handle her just fine."_

_Riker had held up his hands in surrender. "It's your ship, Doc."_

_"That's right, it is."_

Riker hadn't pressed it.

He stared up at the unmoving night sky and sighed. After another moment he leaned forward and buried his face in his hands.

"Will?"

Cochrane had panicked. That much was supposition, based on Deanna's broad evaluation of him. Hell, Riker didn't blame him. Anyone would've panicked, shut up in a lone tin can about to prove a theory that made everyone think he was crazy, nose-to-nose with three very deadly warheads coming straight from the future he was about to birth.

Cochrane had panicked. The Vulcan records showed it. He'd tried _evasive_ _maneuvers_ in an untested ship with experimental engines that handled like a dead shark, for God's sake.

The guy had had some balls, Riker willingly gave him that.

"Will?"

He remembered that day like it was yesterday, knew he always would. The bright flash of silent white flame in the sky. The way everything had stopped around him. The way the world started to rotate in a different direction and he'd known it would never come back quite right again.

He remembered that night, too, as vivid. Trying to round up everyone from the _Enterprise_ when he didn't remember who was here and who wasn't. Hearing Beverly's sobbing voice over the comm badge half-forgotten in his jacket pocket. Watching the unmistakeably Vulcan ship come down from the sky.

Seeing Lily Sloane's face as she realised the weight that lay upon her, and knowing exactly how unequal she felt to the task.

_Will._

He blinked, realised he was staring at the ground between his fingers. Lost in the memory again; that was why she'd pushed her way into his mind and brought him back to now, because she was as used to his distractions as he was.

"Sorry," he grunted, untroubled by the intrusion. There weren't any others of her people here, nor would there be, perhaps in Deanna's lifetime, so he let her be as insistently Betazoid as she wanted to be with him. She needed that. He needed that.

"You can't change what's done, Will."

"We could. We used to." He laughed. It still sounded a little hollow. "Changing what's done, that's what got us all into this in the first place."

They'd lost twelve people. Seven pods damaged or inexpertly programmed, burning up or landing in an ocean that was as lonely as space, in this time, lost to any kind of rescue. They just had no resources for it. Seven people, dead, because that was what stranded people did in this time. Died.

Two new transfers who hadn't kept up with their vaccinations, who'd succumbed weeks and months later to the simplest viruses. A little bit of Beverly had gone with both of them, he knew - what was left of her, after... after.

Three he didn't want to think about. Three people. Three deaths. Hallowby had left a husband and child behind in the future. Ghettar had been the only Tellarite among the crew. Williamson had...

Even Deanna hadn't been able to say why Williamson had done it.

She sat down next to him slowly, pushing her hair back out of her face. She looked tanned, and as if she'd managed to put on a little muscle since the last time he'd really looked at her.

"You look beautiful," he told her softly.

She smiled at him faintly. "Pacific life agrees with my skin tone, apparently."

"It's more than that." He reached out and touched her, wanting the sharper sense of her that came with doing it. "When was the last time we talked about us?"

"Not for another three hundred and eight years," she said. He shook his head and looked back up at the night sky sparkling down on them both.

"Damn it, Deanna."

She covered his hand with her own. "I'm sorry. Did you want to talk?"

"About us." _No,_ he thought back at her, _I don't know if I do,_ but he'd learned too hard how things like this weren't really choices they were allowed to make. "Yeah."

"Why now?"

"I don't know." He shook his head again. "I just... does there have to be a reason?"

"None of us want to move on with our lives, Will," she said very quietly, and he closed his eyes to hold back the burn of tears. She pulled her hand from his and moved closer and rubbed her palm tenderly over his back.

_It's okay to try and let go._

_I don't_ want _to let go._

_You can't hold onto the guilt forever._

_I should have to._

Deanna put her head against his arm and smothered her own silent tears in the thick, worn, replicated leather of his jacket. _Oh, imzadi._

She hadn't called him that in nearly a year. He put his arm around her and held her and buried his face in the darkness of her hair and sobbed with the frustration he couldn't show to anyone else, and she turned awkwardly and wrapped her arms around his waist, staying like that for minutes until it wasn't enough and she climbed somehow into his lap and pressed her face to his heart.

 _Deanna,_ he whispered. It sounded broken, more than he ever would have put into it out loud. _Deanna._

"Don't tell me you're sorry," she murmured against his chest. _I know, Will, I know how you feel, but don't... I don't think I could bear to hear that from you._

"I want to take you home," he choked into her hair. Deanna laughed gratefully without any humor.

"You can't." She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. He felt her, deep in his mind, and he found the effort to let her in further, from somewhere, just to make her smile.

 _I'm already as home as I'm ever going to be,_ she whispered inside him. There wasn't nearly enough loss in the words for how he thought he should feel. Truth be told, truth be damned, he felt...

Lucky. That she was here. That he hadn't lost her in all of this, at all the points when it could have gone wrong. All the points it could have gone right and wouldn't have led him here, to standing on Earth under an accusing night sky with the only person who could help him heal in his arms.

"Tomorrow we have to see Lily again," she said, her voice gentle. "I don't want you to go looking like this."

He touched her hair and it felt silken through his fingers. How had he lived this many months without holding her? No wonder he felt lost.

"Like what?"

"Like you wish you could be selfish enough to be the fourth," she said, barely aloud, and it made his chest tight when he saw her crying again. He kissed her, fast and hard, pressed his mouth to hers and then to her forehead when he crushed her hard against him and managed to remember that she wouldn't care too much if it hurt, right now, as long as he let her know how he felt.

How he felt was just a breath away from devastated, that he'd managed to be this damaged for this long and hadn't made himself go to her until now.

_Fine Captain I'm turning out to be._

_They don't need a Captain, Will. They need an example._ She pushed him away and reached up to lay her palm against his face. "You have to be that for them. We, have to be that for them."

"Is that why you're here?" It wasn't, of course. He knew that. "Trying to seduce me into starting a new life with you for the good of the crew?"

"Trying to make you admit it's what we should be doing," she said. "We're not going back, Will. This is Earth. This is our Earth. Now."

He wanted to say _we shouldn't be here,_ but he couldn't. He wanted to say _I can't let go, Deanna, I'm never going to let go,_ but he couldn't.

"I'm sorry, Deanna," he said instead, the apology she would let him say, and lowered his head and let her kiss him.

There was absolutely nothing different about it. He smiled into her mouth.

_Tomorrow, you said?_

_It's a few hours away yet._ That sharp, deep, warm sense of her washed through him, grounded him, made him feel heavy and strange and normal after so long. _I've missed you, Will._

 _I've been right here,_ he thought, lying, and realising he was lying even as he thought it. Deanna arched her head up a little into his kiss and wrapped her hand behind his head.

 _I can't wait for you any more,_ and she didn't mean she wanted to leave him, he knew that, she just wanted to give him the choice. Make her drag him kicking and screaming - because Deanna would, where no one else would dare - or go willingly into the future with her and at least try and set an example.

They were still his crew. They'd always be his crew. They deserved better than his self-pity. So did Deanna.

He kissed her harder; she locked her fingers tighter behind his neck, so he took the hint and stood up with her cradled in his arms and carried her inside.

  


*

  



End file.
